Day Fourteen is a special day, Hart wrote a card to the Safyre Terry, a young burn victim who has asked for people to send her Christmas cards from all over the world. He sent her one of his calendar art cards which has a picture of him and his art on the front. We hope she loves it.

Day Twelve is all about Christmas Popcorn. Elfie was hanging out in the pantry with the ingredients, and fortunately that tied in with the Activity Advent, and the bottom is the finished product. Popped corn, with white chocolate, and 100s and 1000s. I remembered after we had finished that it’s meant to be red and green pebbles/smarties but Hart didn’t notice so all good.

Day Eleven, and we’re creeping closer to half way. Elfie was on the green tree, which this year is in the dining room and features newly bronzed stars. The Goodie Hart opened was a Star Wars Micro Fighter.

Hopefully we’ll start to have progress on the puzzle and the Lego soon, but in the meantime, Choice for Dinner was the old favourite McDonalds, no toy though it was lame, and Elfie is off for a ride on sparkly reindeer.

With 109 days left until the big day, I’m very keen to start theming the house, but it’s still a little early. (Even for me!)

In the meantime I’ve been keeping myself busy by creating advent calendars and other bits and pieces. Below is the advent calendar I’ve made for my mum.

.

I used small flat bottomed bags, and cut the numbers with my Cricut – each set of 6 bags has a slightly different paper pattern. The bags are held closed with small wooden pegs. I haven’t ‘sealed’ the bags so they can be reused.

I filled the bags with things my mum likes – coffee, skin care and nail treatments, and chocolates. There is also a small handmade gift in the first bag.

As I mentioned towards the end of last year I’m going to be doing a Handmade Christmas this year and along with that I’ll also be celebrating ‘holidays’ as the Americans call them.

Thus far I have done a Waitangi Day (New Zealand Day) and Valentine’s Day display. Both of these were rather low key and the photos will form part of the end-of-year review.

St Patrick’s Day is next, but in the meantime here are my yarn wreaths that I created at one of our family Crafternoon’s last month.

They are really quick and easy to make, probably an hour each plus the crochet flowers.

I used polystyrene wreath forms but you could apply this effect to other bases. For the multi-coloured wreath I chose four different ‘Easter’ coloured skeins of wool. Pulled off about four or five double arm lengths of each colour, tied them together with a knot and secured it at the back with a pin, then wrapped it around the form. I did two completed wraps to give it a good solid covering and create the right look. For the crochet flowers, which my sister did as I am still a novice crocheter, we chose two of the four colours and then added an extra accent with a third colour in the form of a button.

For the beige wreath, with is very neutral, it’s a type of cotton but the concept is the same. Draw out 4 or 5 double arm lengths, secured at the back (for this one I actually tied the new length to the old rather than using pins) much easier when it’s just one strand of the yarn. This form also has a double layering. With a single yarn you need to take more care with ensuring there are no gaps. There’s just a single crochet flower on this (as I was nearly out of yarn), and a pearlised shell button.

I’m really happy with how they turned out. They were very easy. I’ll keep the multi-coloured one as it is but the beige one could easily have colours added to it (and remove the flower if necessary) to make it fit with the other themes throughout the year. I have another smaller wreath that I have wrapped with some ribbon that will be part of the Easter blog, and a much larger one that at present is wrapped with white tulle which will also feature in a future post.